


The Coming Thunder Of Hooves

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 1950s, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, M/M, Race, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a kinkmeme prompt that I felt was kind of dangerous, but I thought I'd give it a go. I am not trying to set out any kind of a political position here and if I get a bunch of complaints I'll just delete the whole thing, okay?</p><p>1950's-stuck, and Horuss must deal with a forbidden relationship, that will be accepted neither by his peers nor by his putative lover. Themes of homosexuality, race and politics, this is probably not a fic that will be enjoyable so don't read it if you're already starting to get a little unhappy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coming Thunder Of Hooves

  
  
    The sound of hooves across a playing-field is quite unlike any other sound. This is because the flatness, and openness, of the field lends itself to the transmission of the sound. It is impossible for the observer to be unaware of it, a roaring thumping noise the loosens them deep down, and provides a permanent counterpoint to the higher, lesser shouts and cries of the riders. Since 1883 the sport of polo had been played on fast, lean ponies at Harvard and that august gathering had faced off against the men of Cornell, Yale and the elder colleges of Oxford and Cambridge across the water in England.  
  
The players yapped and hallooed to one another as they struck the ball with rhythmic tocks of wood on wood, and the horses champed and snorted as they gave their all to the game. The summer season was long gone, but the autumn mists limned the players in their practise. Around the edges of the playing field in Hamilton, Massachusetts a few of the most eager followers of the game were watching the practice eagerly for any hint as to the shape of the upcoming season. Along the edges a single female figure stood, solemn and alone. She had a pair of field-glasses to watch the match with, but her gaze rarely lingers on the rough and tumble of horses and men, lingering only on the one player she had come to see.  
  
After the practice was declared over for the day the polo players dismounted, shaking hands formally in the manner of gentlemen, and led their mounts back to the stables. At this, the girl at the edge of the playing field showed the most attention. She wanted to see with her own eyes what she had heard in rumour and innuendoes.  
  
The stable at Hamilton is more then that simple name implies, a long white-washed wooden building that could easily hold a hundred horses. The various Harvard teams through the ages had practised there and used these august and ancient facilities. Now, however, the horses were a little fewer and the stables a little more empty. The times lent themselves toward more overtly modern pursuits with the advent of the jet age and the sure and certain struggle for dominance that was coming against the communists. This was not an age for gentlemen and sportsmen, not in the way that it had been.  
  
Horace Zahhak led his pony into the darkening gloom and he was almost immediately met by the stable boy who habitually care for his mount. The young negro nodded to him familiarly ad he took the reins and patted Danny's muscular neck.  
“A good game, Mister Horace?”  
“Yes,” Horace answered cooly, “but Danny isn't running like normal, I think the cold is getting to her.”  
“Aww, she's just highly strung, see she don't appreciate these early mornin' starts. She likes a later start, when she's had time to warm up her joints.”  
“I suppose she told you that?”  
“Well, maybe she did! Jus' maybe she did.”  
Horace smiled. It was a game they played with their back-and-forth, but they both knew that nobody understood the vain moods and shifting temperaments of the steeds like Rufus. The boy was  more then just a stable hand, he practically lived with the horses all winter and he cared for them with the loving, attentive hand of a trusted family member. All of the players on the Harvard team, that is all of the players who intended to make a serious go of it, knew that you got nowhere on the field unless you were in good with Rufus. For his part, Horace was different. He didn't play Rufus to get ahead in polo, he played polo to the very best of his ability so that he could be justified in spending ever more time with Rufus.  
“You wouldn't be holding out on me would you Rufus?”  
“Now, would I do a think like that?”  
“You would if you thought it'd get you an extra dollar or two.”  
Rufus regarded him evenly. In the gloom of the stable Horace fancied that all he could see was a pair of ice-white eyes set in a sepulchral-dark shadow, but that was a lie. He could see the even, firm lines of Rufus' form perfectly well but the boy's eyes held him fixedly anyway.  
“I'd not never lie to you, man. Not for no dollar or nothin.'”  
“I guess,” Horace looked around, uneasy, and stepped closer. Rufus just stood there grinning.  
“Ma-a-a-an, you're all that,” Rufus remarked, “you're the full yard, why you got to be all front all the time, huh?”  
Horace felt a thrill of excitement that he studiously suppressed, as he did whenever he managed to elicit more then a surly sentence out of Rufus.  
“What do you mean, Rufus?”  
“I'll up and tell you all you want to know,” Rufus said seriously, “an' more, I'll make sure Danny, she runs like a nigger in a cornfield, if it's what you wantin.'”  
“Oh yes?”  
Rufus tilted his head on one side and touched his soft, smile-creased cheek with a grubby finger.  
“Ayup. And all you got ta do, Mister, you got to put a little kiss right there.”  
  
Horace glanced around the wide, empty space and grinned in the dark. He cupped Rufus' face in his hands and kissed him powerfully and passionately on the lips. He was not careful or romantic, though he would have been if he knew how, it was a kiss of longing and aching and asking, and no more then that. A wet and messy thing, Horace tasted tobacco and sweat and spice, and felt hard, powerful hands briefly touch over his body before the kiss ended.  
  
“See, you know how to ask when you really wants to,” Rufus noted.  
“You're right,” Horace stroked his hand over Rufus' cheek fondly, “I know how to ask. Be with m-”  
Rufus held up a finger suddenly against Horace's lips, silencing him.  
“Shush, you. Don't say that. Don't spoil it, okay? Just... don't make this into a thing it can't be.”  
“Why can't it? Really?”  
“You're gonna ask me that seriously?”  
“Sure. Why not? I mean, come on, it's the twentieth century after all.”  
Rufus sighed softly and stroked his hands through the black hair thick with pomade that ran down Horace's neck.  
“My daddy used to tell me, don't ever take your eyes off a cracker.”  
“Yes, but-”  
“He used to get me an' my brothers together after we all eat, and he'd tell us stories. You get me?”  
“I know what you mean,”  
“No you ain't! You ever look in your daddy's eyes and watch him try not to cry while he tell you he got off an army bus after the man told him he done a good job fightin' off them Japs, and he have to walk home past bars that had “No Coloureds” signs?”  
Horace closed his eyes, he never knew how to deal with Rufus at times like this.  
“I don't,”  
“My daddy had to walk 'till his feet was bleedin,' just to get a glass of water. That's after he was there on Okinawa with a million million Japs shootin' his ass off. You want to be with me? Make all that not have happened, white man.”  
“You think I'm like that? Because I am not. I promise you.”  
“Naw, you ain't like that. You're one of the good ones, and we cool. But that don't change the way things is. Just... just take what you got, and be happy, okay?”  
Horace kissed him again.  
“When I look at you, I don't see black skin.”  
Rufus groaned softly into the kiss.  
“I know. But I sure as hell do, every time I look in the damn mirror. You can't just pretend that away, it's how it is.”  
“Doesn't have to be.”  
Rufus wanted to hit him in that moment. Nothing in Horace's life had to be, he could have it all and go anywhere he wanted. He could surround himself with fellow students and Ivy-league types might -might- think it was easier to overlook a racial transgression then challenge him openly but in no way did that honour extend to Rufus. Poor Rufus, black Rufus, Rufus the negro boy who had a hankering for a little white meat. Yes, it was hard for Horace to contemplate the unthinkable but how much harder was it for Rufus who had to actually live in the world that Horace insisted he had no interest in perpetuating.  
  
“You better go,” Rufus whispered, “no sense hangin' round.”  
“I'll be in Hamilton for another night,” Horace hissed through gritted teeth, “where will you be tonight?”  
“At the club,” Rufus shrugged, “it's Friday.”  
“I'll come see you there.”  
“It's not for whites.”  
“So? I don't care. I'll come anyway.”  
“It's all so God damn easy for you, isn't it?”  
“Why are you angry with me? I'm doing this for you!”  
“Oh sure, and I'm surely so thankful!”  
“I... I feel like... you don't even care when I do things?”  
Rufus squeezed his eyes closed and took a breath.  
“When's the next practice?”  
“On the fourteenth.”  
“I'll see you on the fourteenth.” Rufus turned away. Horace held up a hand but Rufus wasn't watching. The small gesture went unacknowledged.  
  
Horace walked from the the stable, casually pulling open the buttons of his polo shirt against the heat of his recent exertion and his recent emotion. As he trudged his way out over the cold ground he paused as a slim hand pressed against his chest. He looked up into the blank, intent starlike stare of Reeny.  
“What are you up to here, Horace?”  
“Playing polo? What do you mean?”  
“You know damn well what I mean. What are you about, talking to that boy?”  
“If you meant the stable boy,” Horace sniffed, “we were discussing strategy.”  
“You like him, hmm?”  
“Well certainly,” Horace frowned, guardedly, “why not?”  
“Maybe you ought to think about what's best for him, as much as what's best for you, next time.”  
Horace straightened up. His body was firmed by the sporting life and he towered easily over the girl.  
“What do you mean by that?”  
“By that I mean that the struggle of the negro man to retain fortitude is not helped by the unnatural temptations he might encounter on the way!”  
“What are you saying?”  
“You know exactly what I'm saying! And I'm not going to see the work being done by this university to prepare the negro for full integration put in jeopardy by a... a horny jockey!”  
Horace felt an obscure and nameless heat rise in his breast and pink his cheeks, though he was unable to give any name to it or direction to this force.  
“I think you're talking out of turn, if you're saying what I think you're saying!”  
“Here,” she slapped a folded sheet of paper into his hand without warning, “if you're serious about helping your... friend... then you need to reach out for the help and learning that is available to you. The conscientious white man can be the greatest ally and friend to the black man!”  
  
Horace looked down into his palm, it was a poorly-reproduced flyer advertising one of Reeny's interminable lectures regarding the proper development and future of the negro.  
“Why are you doing this?”  
“How can you ask that? How is it that anyone can look upon the suffering of an entire race and think not to act?”  
“You don't talk like, uhm...”  
“Like a negro?”  
She lifted her chin arrogantly and glared at him from behind the Bakelite frames of her glasses.  
“I guess.”  
“Well Horace,” she touched his hand just briefly, a slight passing gesture and nothing more, “you've been associating with only the most base kind of negroes.”  
He looked at her sternly, his voice caught solidly in his throat for a moment.  
“I don't understand,”  
She leaned up, and kissed his cheek.  
“There's more then one way to be,” she said, “I'll help you.”  
  



End file.
